From My Bottom Step

Murray Faulkner visited City Hall this morning in order to provide information about the 2010 London Police Service operating budget.

An infrastructure problem prevented me from webcasting the meeting, but I did manage to grab some video on my handheld recorder and will post that as soon as possible. In the meantime, here’s some of what I managed to jot down…

INCREASE.

The average 2010 increase for Ontario Municipal police services is currently 4.5% but LPS held it to 4.2% this year.

UNBUDGETED INCREASED COSTS.

There have been increased costs in many areas, but instead of reacting to that fact of life by including them in the proposed increase, LPS appears to be reducing some service. Like a reduction in the officers assigned to CORE units. 24 officers are being pulled off of specific operational areas to put them on to the street.

There’s been a significant increase in the cost of operating the police headquarters because of the new expansion. And the problem of asbestos in the older part of the headquarters has been deferred until next year.

There’s $160K in the police budget for operating the expanded facility but it may not be enough.

The amount budgeted for overtime didn’t see an increase in 2007, 2008 or 2009 even though “an hour of work costs more now” and so “we’ll continue to run short there.”

WSIB costs have increased significantly but any increase for that in the budget has been postponed until next year.

The cost of courthouse policing. Total cost of policing the Bandidos trial was $2.5M and there will be more of those kind of cases coming here because of our high-security courthouse. The province has indicated that it plans to slowly assume at least some of that extra cost but that won’t even start until 2012 or 2013. London Police don’t have any choice about whether to provide courthouse security or not. Several years ago the Chief in Peel Region got arrested (judge found him in contempt) when the municipality refused to provide court security. And if new proposed courtrooms get built the Chief says that nothing has been budgeted for that.

108 officers were assigned to the torch run. That money wasn’t in the budget because the Chief didn’t know it was going to happen.

RISK.

The consequence of holding the increase to 4.2%.

TAXES.

Chief Faulkner recognizes that “on a yearly basis, police services takes more of the tax levy” but is quick to point out that “Macleans rated us the top city in Ontario” and that “London is 2nd-lowest (% of property tax levy) for single-tier police services in the province.”

WORKFORCE.

“We’re not over-policed… we don’t have too many… the level of policing in 2010 is where it should have been in 2001.”

WORKLOAD.

“The complexity of investigations is increasing.” And he added that “there’s a whole plethora of things” that have happened over the past 10 years that haven’t been accounted for in his budget.

Appended 2010/01/08 @ 04:00 p.m:

Here are the slides that Chief Faulkner used during his presentation.

Appended 2010/01/08 @ 04:05 p.m:

This is the handout that was provided.